IoT Forensics: Challenges For The IoA Era

Challenges for IoT-based forensic investigations include the increasing amount of objects of forensic interest, relevance of identified and collected devices, blurry network boundaries, and edgeless networks. As we look ahead to a world of expanding ubiquitous computing, the challenge of forensic processes such as data acquisition (logical and physical) and extraction and analysis of data grows in this space. Containing an IoT breach is increasingly challenging – evidence is no longer restricted to a PC or mobile device, but can be found in vehicles, RFID cards, and smart devices. Through the combination of cloud-native forensics with client-side forensics (forensics for companion devices), we can study and develop the connection to support practical digital investigations and tackle emerging challenges in digital forensics. With the IoT bringing investigative complexity, this enhances challenges for the Internet of Anything (IoA) era. IoA brings anything and everything “online” in a connectedness that generates an explosion of connected devices, from fridges, cars and drones, to smart swarms, smart grids and intelligent buildings. Research to identify methods for performing IoT-based digital forensic analysis is essential. The long-term goal is the development of digital forensic standards that can be used as part of overall IoT and IoA security and aid IoT-based investigations

An elastic scaling method for cloud security

Cloud computing is being adopted in critical sectors such as transport, energy and finance. This makes cloud computing services critical in themselves. When cyber attacks and cyber disruptions happen, millions of users are affected. A cyber disruption in this context means a temporary or permanent loss of service, with impact on users of the cloud service who rely on its continuity. Intrusion detection and prevention methods are being developed to protect this sensitive information being stored, and the services being deployed. There needs to be an assurance that the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the data and resources are maintained. This paper presents a background to the critical infrastructure and cloud computing progression, and an overview to the cloud security conundrum. Analysis of existing intrusion detection methods is provided, in addition to our observation and proposed elastic scaling method for cloud security

Distributed attack prevention using Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence

This paper details a robust collaborative intrusion detection methodology for detecting attacks within a Cloud federation. It is a proactive model and the responsibility for managing the elements of the Cloud is distributed among several monitoring nodes. Since there are a wide range of elements to manage, complexity grows proportionally with the size of the Cloud, so a suitable communication and monitoring hierarchy is adopted. Our architecture consists of four major entities: the Cloud Broker, the monitoring nodes, the local coordinator (Super Nodes), and the global coordinator (Command and Control server - C2). Utilising monitoring nodes into our architecture enhances the performance and response time, yet achieves higher accuracy and a broader spectrum of protection. For collaborative intrusion detection, we use the Dempster Shafer theory of evidence via the role of the Cloud Broker. Dempster Shafer executes as a main fusion node, with the role to collect and fuse the information provided by the monitors, taking the final decision regarding a possible attack

Collaborative Intrusion Detection in Federated Cloud Environments

Moving services to the Cloud is a trend that has steadily gained popularity over recent years, with a constant increase in sophistication and complexity of such services. Today, critical infrastructure operators are considering moving their services and data to the Cloud. Infrastructure vendors will inevitably take advantage of the benefits Cloud Computing has to offer. As Cloud Computing grows in popularity, new models are deployed to exploit even further its full capacity, one of which is the deployment of Cloud federations. A Cloud federation is an association among different Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) with the goal of sharing resources and data. In providing a larger-scale and higher performance infrastructure, federation enables on-demand provisioning of complex services. In this paper we convey our contribution to this area by outlining our proposed methodology that develops a robust collaborative intrusion detection methodology in a federated Cloud environment. For collaborative intrusion detection we use the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence to fuse the beliefs provided by the monitoring entities, taking the final decision regarding a possible attack. Protecting the federated Cloud against cyber attacks is a vital concern, due to the potential for significant economic consequences

Teaching note: assessing social work students on placement: a model for professional competence

This teaching note describes how the author (a practice teacher and university lecturer) retrospectively considered and applied the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger; with a specific focus on situtaed learning, communities of practice and pre-qualifying social work education in Northern Ireland. Through this retrospective lens, this conceptual paper presents a new, inclusive model for practice teachers (practice educators) and social work students to use in professional supervision. The Social Work Placement Professional Competence (PPC) Model is presented as a supervisory tool to guide and frame professional discussions and critical analysis of student’s practice. The model can be used to critically reflect on the development of the students’ incremental learning, knowledge base, evidence of decision-making, assessment of need and ability to effectively manage risk.<br/

The Place of Health in Evolution.

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The Shared Stories Narrative Model

The Shared Stories Narrative Model is an innovative tool for practitioners and social work educators to realise their commitment to co-production and service user involvement. The model focuses on service users’ involvement in social work education in Northern Ireland referenced in our publication MacDermott and Harkin-MacDermott (2019) Co-producing a Shared Stories Narrative Model for social work education with experts by experience. Practice, 32, (2), 89-108. This research focuses on first-year students and co-production with experts by experience from a voluntary sector agency in Northern Ireland. What emerged from this research was a wholly original, co-produced Shared Stories Narrative Model.The Shared Stories Narrative Model enables social work educators, students and practitioners to work alongside experts by experience through four stages: Engaging, Collaborating, Participating and Providing feedback. The poster illustrates applying the Sharing Stories Narrative Model in practice. The model can be used by social work students and practitioners to enhance relationships through the meaningful inclusion and participation of service users and people with lived experience. This model was created alongside young people with a focus on interactive dialogue and discussion and devolving power by placing an emphasis on working collaboratively through ongoing consultation and participation. This collaborative model has the potential to shape curricula, not only within social work education, but across subject disciplines